Photek wrote:The Third and final book in the Stephen King Bill Hodges Trilogy is out today - End of Watch.

Haven't read any of these, are they good?

The first one is a good suspense book, the second is fine but it's almost entirely irrelevant to the first. You get the feeling King was working on the story and just decided to add the Mr Mercedes characters to it because he was bored. They're barely in it. You could literally skip book 2 and move straight from book 1 to 3.

Finished the third at the weekend and I liked it but the first remains the best in that trilogy.

It isn't meant to be about the Mercedes fella, it is about the detective, I'm about half way through and he seems to be fairly prominent to me.

Just started reading through Red Dragon. I can't stop picturing the characters from the show, but Alana's a bloke, Freddie's a bloke, and Jack Crawford might be a white guy rather than Laurence Fishburne.

Frank wrote:Just started reading through Red Dragon. I can't stop picturing the characters from the show, but Alana's a bloke, Freddie's a bloke, and Jack Crawford might be a white guy rather than Laurence Fishburne.

Frank wrote:Just started reading through Red Dragon. I can't stop picturing the characters from the show, but Alana's a bloke, Freddie's a bloke, and Jack Crawford might be a white guy rather than Laurence Fishburne.

It's a broad question but does anyone have any recommendations for history books? I'm not looking for anything in particular, I'm more interested for the sake of learning in general so if you have a favourite, throw it out there and I'll take a look. Wars, the rise and fall of empires, various eras, I don't mind.

SugarDave wrote:It's a broad question but does anyone have any recommendations for history books? I'm not looking for anything in particular, I'm more interested for the sake of learning in general so if you have a favourite, throw it out there and I'll take a look. Wars, the rise and fall of empires, various eras, I don't mind.

Not a book recommendation but I'd definitely point you in the direction of the Hardcore History podcast.

SugarDave wrote:It's a broad question but does anyone have any recommendations for history books? I'm not looking for anything in particular, I'm more interested for the sake of learning in general so if you have a favourite, throw it out there and I'll take a look. Wars, the rise and fall of empires, various eras, I don't mind.

This might not be exactly what you are looking for (it's mostly natural history) but Bill Bryson's "A Short History of Nearly Everything" is an excellent read.

Think I already have that on my Kindle actually, I'll give it a read, thanks. I've heard about the HH podcast before but not listened to it yet, is it told more through storytelling or is it just a guy doling out straight up facts?

SugarDave wrote:Think I already have that on my Kindle actually, I'll give it a read, thanks. I've heard about the HH podcast before but not listened to it yet, is it told more through storytelling or is it just a guy doling out straight up facts?

It's kind of a mixture. I'd recommend the world war I series first if it's still available (they tend to be free for a year or so), it's 6 episodes all of which are over 3 hours so it's a bit of a monster. But it's very informative and seems to be very well researched. The recent ones are on Sparta, not sure whether it's just I'm less interested in the period but I'm struggling a little with those.

EDIT: The WWI podcasts are still free on itunes. I'd really recommend grabbing those soon as they do disappear from the feed over time. The Prophets of Doom one is also a really good self contained story (about a religious cult in Munster) or the American Peril one (about communism in the US). That might be a good jumping off point to see if you like Dan's style

I'm currently about 2/3rds of the way through The Long Earth by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter. I quite like it, it seems to be a lot more Baxter than Pratchett but I'm finding it less dry than other Baxter books I'd read in the past (I read the Manifold series quite a while back). Not sure whether I'll bother going for the whole series though.

Still got Drood by Dan Simmons to read after picking up cheap in a Kindle sale but I'm not sure I want another massive book to read at the moment. Saw a book called Nod by Adrian Barnes in a recent Amazon newsletter, anyone recommend it?

I'm currently about 1/2 way through An Utterly Impartial History of Britain (or 2,000 Years Of Upper Class Idiots In Charge) by John O'Farrell, and it's bloody brilliant.

It's my 3rd time reading through it, decided to pick it up again following the Brexit stuff that's been going on, helps gives me some perspective on this island nation of ours (spoiler - we're all immigrants, every last one of us).

O'Farrell manages to weave classic dry British humour throughout the story of how Britain came to be the place it is today, highly recommend it.

I read the first 2 books of the "Millennium" trilogy while I was on holiday recently and thought they were very good. First one took a while to get going.

As a result watched the American version of "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" film and thought that was good too. Apparently it didn't do as well as hoped at the box office so any further films are not going to involve Fincher & Craig which is disappointing. The material is right up Fincher's street.

I do enjoy reading but only ever seem to get the time to do it while sitting round a pool on holiday but I need to make a point of reading the final book while the others are still fresh in the memory.

SugarDave wrote:It's a broad question but does anyone have any recommendations for history books? I'm not looking for anything in particular, I'm more interested for the sake of learning in general so if you have a favourite, throw it out there and I'll take a look. Wars, the rise and fall of empires, various eras, I don't mind.

The Third Reich Trilogy by Richard J Evans is brilliant, 60+hrs in total of how the Nazi's rose to power, what Germany was like under them and of course the war.